It must be so frustrating for G-d. He holds back from doing the one thing that would make His life infinitely easier. Talking to us. Imagine the exasperation of trying to establish a relationship without using words? Of trying to get close to someone who doesn’t even realize you’re in the room most of the time. Of waving your omnipotent hand in front of their face and they just keep walking. Imagine the only means of discourse at your disposal are trees, birds, timing, and coincidence. These are your tools of intimacy. You can also plant subliminal messages but those tend to get brushed aside. If I had that situation, I would need to scream into a pillow every night. A muffled scream that would sound like this: “Hello! I’m right here. In front of your face. See all that stuff around you? I made it and I run it. Stop worrying so much. I got this. And for My sake, enjoy your life!” G-d is much nicer than I, more patient than I.
G-d tied His own hands. He handicapped His own game so we can win the game for ourselves and really earn the win. The real mark of G-d’s patience is that He never comes out of hiding. He is that patient father playing the world’s longest game of Hide and Seek with us. How do we win this game with Him? The winning comes from being relentless in the seeking. The game is so perfectly proportional. The harder we seek, the more of G-d we find. Brief glimpses. The ultimate objective of the game: to seek the hidden relationship with G-d down here in the dark, in order to get closer to Him up there in the light. That’s the game. I’m pretty sure.
So I look for G-d everywhere I go. Sometimes, I can hear G-d clearing His throat from His hiding place. I call it Divine Redundancy. We have all experienced this type of attention getter from G-d. When you hear the same word twice, or bump into two sisters in the same morning, things like that. A Divine Redundancy is something oddly duplicate or strangely redundant within a short period of time. The thing about Divine Redundancies is that you can miss them if you aren’t paying attention. They are easily dismissable because they can be subtle. When you notice one, hold it tight, because wrapped inside that redundancy is the best gift ever; intimacy with G-d. It feels like the funniest private joke between the two of you. You want to run and tell other people. Then you realize no one else will truly get it. People will give you their best overcompensated smile. That transcendent feeling loses something in translation. The way it made your heart soar. Only you and G-d will understand how crazy it was.
I had an amazing Divine Redundancy this past week. Words can’t convey how sweet it felt, but something compels me to try. I met two different Mordechais this week. An easy redundancy to overlook. Except that these two Mordechais each delivered me a miracle.
My first Mordechai. I had a patient in my chair this week. He looked like he could be a bouncer, a bodyguard, or a football player with his big arms, barrel chest, and thick beard to match. He turned out to be something much more benevolent, a critical care physician. I got him numb and while we were waiting I asked him how his experience in the hospital was during the pandemic. He started telling me all the stories. All the fear he encountered. All the confusion he witnessed. How nobody really knew what they were treating or what they were doing. It was the Wild West and everyone did the best they could. He admitted that he felt bad for the wrong treatment delivered before they understood the symptoms better. His honesty and his humility struck me. He had a casual, salt of the earth charm. Like that rugged biker who pulls his Harley over on the side of the road and changes a flat for you.
I asked him how it felt wearing all that gear. He said he didn’t and he couldn’t. He said he just wasn’t able to work under all that. He couldn’t deliver care to people looking like an astronaut.
I felt my throat start to thicken. I didn’t even know it, but I had been waiting for this guy. I was holding my breath for him to show up in my life. I could finally exhale; here he was, sitting in my chair like it was no big deal. An everyday hero who put himself in harm’s way for the remarkable sake of delivering mercy to terrified people. He risked his life for something greater than himself. He bounded through a hurricane scooping up vulnerable people, without even a raincoat on. He showed his face and his humanity at a time when desperate people needed it the most. What a relief to find a creature like him still exists. I worried they had all gone extinct.
I asked him if he got in trouble for it. He told me the president of the hospital came down. They both looked at each other, smiled, and walked away. I think when you look the way he does, not too many people mess with you. Especially when you exude the calm confidence of a giant.
One particular story made me have to walk out of the room to let out a stifled whimper. It went like this. He had a patient who needed to be admitted. The patient was struggling to breathe. As they were about to take him up to his room, the patient started to panic because he had left his cell phone in the car. His phone was his only access to his loved ones and to the outside world.
My hero looks around and tells the guy to get into a wheelchair. He pushes him past a security guard who tries to stop them. He waves him off and says we’ll be back in five minutes. They get the phone from the car outside and roll back inside like nothing happened. Mission accomplished. The brazen chesed held inside these five minutes carries enough value to redeem an entire world.
I happen to have a weakness for this type of renegade. A person who is wise to the game, who understands when it is time to break the rules. When to look the other way because no real harm will come from it. They see the greater good that will come from breaking that rule. This takes a combination of seichel, brawn, and good humor, a rare breed. A person in a position of power who understands that sometimes the best moments happen outside the rules.
He also told me that he would sneak family members into patient rooms for a few minutes to say goodbye before they were hurried out of the hospital. Especially if he felt it would be their final goodbye. He slayed me. I almost couldn’t handle hearing more. It was too good. This Mordechai touched my soul, I was in awe of him. He was my first miracle.
My second Mordechai. I had written an article last week called “Truth Will Win.” It was not able to go into the local paper that week. I was disappointed. I had taken a lot of time to write it and felt passionate about it. But alas, it was not meant to be.
In that article I had written about truth. That when truth is released, it can take on a life of its own. I sat at my computer and debated with myself. Should I hold this message until next week and maybe the paper will publish it then or should I put it up on my Facebook page? I wanted the article to get as much circulation as possible. I wasn’t sure of the smarter move. On impulse, I posted it. I asked Hashem one small prayer: help it fly. What happened next blew my mind.
Within minutes of posting it, a private message popped on my phone screen. Enter the second Mordechai. He saw my post and asked me if he could publish it to his news website. His news website has tremendous viewership. I was shocked. I said yes. A half hour later my niece texted me that her in-laws in Baltimore saw the article and loved it. I couldn’t believe it. It flew. I walked around drunk the rest of the day. High on the transcendent feeling that Hashem can make anything happen, easily. It’s cake for Him. Later that day, the connection hit me. Two miracles in two days from two Mordechais. Surreal redundancy.
In Parashat Eikev, Rashi transmits a foundational concept. He explains, “HaKol biyidei Shamayim, chutz me’yirat Shamayim.” Rashi learns this tenet from the verse (Devarim 10:12), “Now Israel, what does Hashem, your G-d, ask of you? But to have Awe of Hashem, your G-d.” Rashi explains that everything is in the hands of Heaven except for Awe of Heaven. Our job on earth is to discern the outrageous maneuvers G-d orchestrates in order to capture our affection. That all we need to do, our entire contribution, is to notice them and respond to them with awe.
None of us are left out. Divine Redundancies happen to all of us. They come to make us fall in Awe of Heaven. You can’t believe all the trouble Heaven went to for your amusement. Awe of Heaven is ultra-high on the emotional frequency scale. When you linger inside that emotion of personal attention from G-d, you attract more of it into your experience. When I’m really paying attention I can pick up on three or four redundancies in a single day.
As I was finishing up writing this, a subliminal thought landed almost unnoticed inside my head. Thankfully I caught it because it made me stop and hang my head in gratitude. The thought whispered, “It wasn’t just these two Mordechais, you have been surrounded by an abundance of Mordechais your whole life.
My earliest Mordechai. My Zaidy, Mordechai Simcha Edelstein, a’h, was a strong, silent type. He cried when he picked up the phone and heard the news that I was born. He cried when all the babies were born. He taught me to walk as a baby; it wasn’t easy. When I fell and busted my lip, he also cried. I can still see his own scar slashed across his upper lip that he earned from the back-end of a Nazi rifle. He had many other hidden scars slashed into his heart from those terrible years. Thank G-d there is an abundance of Mordechais walking around our family carrying his name. He was plucked from the fire in his early twenties, the sole survivor of his family. His typhus-ridden skeleton was carried out of Bergen Belsen. My Zaidy recovered in a Swedish DP camp and fought like a wounded animal to make it. Generations were born from that fight; I was born from that fight. I owe my chance at life to the blood-soaked resilience of my Mordechai. I carry him inside my whole heart. He gives me an endless reserve of Awe of Heaven every time I sink into his triumphant life story.
All these different Mordechais coalesce all inside my heart. They leave me wistful, longing for a time when this game of Hide and Seek will finally be over. When G-d will come out of His hiding place and show us the kindness and playfulness on His face. When G-d will speak to us in full sentences instead of hints. When we will all understand what Rashi was trying so hard to teach us back then. That every time we look for G-d with awe, we find Him.